I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Sept. 20 needing to pee. I was trying to get to the bathroom but my dog was lying in front of the door and wouldn't move. I was poking him with my foot when I felt a gush. I yanked the door open and got to the bathroom, thinking about how much my husband was going to make fun of me for peeing my pants. I peed, but noticed there was a lot of blood in it and I was still kind of leaking. I stood up and there was another gush.

I grabbed a towel and woke up my husband. I can't believe how calm I was. He jumped up and started grabbing random clothes to put on, so I told him we didn't need to get there right this second and I was going to call L&D and take a shower first.

After a quick shower, we headed out. I started to get nervous because the baby wasn't moving much and I started thinking about cord prolapse and other scary stuff.

I was in triage for probably an hour while we filled out paperwork, they made sure my membranes had actually ruptured and they monitored the baby.

I finally got moved into a room and they started a pitocin drip because I was only 1 cm dilated and not having any contractions. By 10:30 I was dilated to 3 cm and ready for some pain relief. I tried an IV pain killer but it didn't work, so I signed the paperwork for the epi.

By that time my mom was there, and my husband had to leave the room because he didn't think he could handle seeing the needle After the epi, I was great. I just hung out for a few hours and watched the contractions on the monitor.

The baby had moved back up, so the nurse was having me roll over every 15 minutes. After awhile the epi started to wear off and they tried adding another dose to the catheter. I had a really bad reaction to it. I couldn't breathe or hear and I just started bawling. The baby's heartrate dropped really low, and the nurse was yelling at me to roll over. I finally started to feel back in control and was able to roll over to my other side. Sometime in the middle of that they inserted internal monitors. I think that's when the epi started to wear off.

The anesthesiologist re-administered the epi and I felt OK again.

I kept rolling over every 15 minutes, but after the second epi, it was making me throw up, so I eventually gave up and just stayed on one side. A new nurse came on shift and checked me. She made me lay flat on my back, even though I didn't want to because that's what made the first epi wear off. Sure enough, as soon as she did that, I started feeling really intense pain.

The anesthesiologist came in again and added a higher dose. This one completely numbed me from the waist down. After awhile I started feeling a lot of pressure and I was at 9 cm. The contractions were getting stronger and stronger and I could feel more pain with each contraction.

The urge to push was so great, I was sure the baby was crowning, but I was still at 9. The nurse and my midwife had me do some practice pushes, but all they did was make my cervix start to swell. As the contractions got stronger, I couldn't stop my body from pushing, and every time I pushed, everyone in the room would yell at me to stop. I could barely breathe through the contractions.

At this point, I was begging for a c-section because I knew there was no way I was going to make it. I had been at 9 cm for an hour and a half without the epi working.

The midwife agreed, and got the paperwork for the c-section. I could barely sign it because the contractions were so close and intense. After I signed it, they were trying to get my husband dressed in his scrubs and I couldn't get my tongue ring out. He had to do it for me. They gave the tongue ring and my earrings to my dad in a biohazard bag

As I got wheeled to the OR I was still contracting really bad and I couldn't control the urge to push. Once we got to the OR, they took my robe, so I was only wearing my sports bra. I was so cold. The anesthesiologist was doing tests to make sure the epi was still working (it wasn't). So they had to unstrap me, and put in the third epi. Once that kicked in they started the surgery.

I was so exhausted at this point that I kept falling asleep while they were working. It just felt like the baby kicking and I didn't even know what was going on until I heard him cry. I just started laughing because I was so relieved it was over, and my husband was crying. I found out later he cut the cord. He brought the baby around so I could see him, but I couldn't really turn my head enough to look, so I didn't get to see him until I was out of recovery and in my room about two hours later.

In recovery, I couldn't stop shivering, which they said was really common in c-sections. They wrapped about 5 warm blankets around me but it didn't help. The shivering stopped after about an hour.

Once I got in my room, my husband went to the nursery to get Cooper. I was able to hold him for about 20 minutes before the night nurse came in to check the dressing on my incision. Cooper spend the night in the nursery, because my husband and I were both so exhausted there was no way we would have been able to take care of him that night.

So after 19 hours of labor, three epidurals and an emergency c-section, I had my beautiful little boy,